'Suncoast' sneaks up on you
The Sundance film, about a girl's family crisis agaisnt the backdrop of the Terri Schiavo case, is a February Hulu sleeper
Suncoast is one of those films that’s so specific that it must be based, at least loosely, on something that happened to the director in real life. And yes, that’s the exact backstory, with writer/director Laura Chinn basing the film on her real experiences.
It’s also one of those films that didn’t seem all that special until it snuck up on me in a serious way.
Suncoast, which was a Sundance film and very much feels like one, is a fairly straightforward teen coming-of-age film, with one twist: It’s set up against the backdrop of one of the most controversial culture war battles of the last 25 years. That would be the Terri Schiavo controversy, in which a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state was the subject of a long-running legal battle that ended with her death in 2005.
The film is not really about the Schiavo case, nor does it really take a position on it or even do much to tie it to the main plot. Instead, Suncoast is about Doris (Nico Parker), a teenage girl from a working-class family whose older brother is in the end stages of cancer, in the same facility where Schiavo was in her final days. The brother is not part of any type of legal or familial battle over his fate (Chinn, the director, also had a brother who was in the same facility as Schiavo.)
Doris appears to have spent much of her life, spent with her single mom (Laura Linney), in the shadow of her sick brother. By the time of the film’s action, she’s starting to come into her own in her teen social life, which remains on hold while everyone waits on her brother’s status. On the one hand, her mother spending nights at the hospice gives her the chance to host parties, while on the other, going out means she might miss her brother’s passing.
The other side of the film is Doris’ friendship with an adult man named Paul (Woody Harrelson) who is around the facility protesting Schiavo’s impending death. While it’s always great to see Harrelson, his character doesn’t particularly add much to the film, and it’s easy to imagine it without him.
Parker, in particular, is a revelation. This month’s movies have a lot of teen roles, but this one feels different and unique. Also, I so loved the closing credits music, which resembled that of Explosions in the Sky, that I left the screener on to the end.
There’s never been a real Hollywood treatment of the Schiavo case, since it’s not exactly a cinematic story, although Alexander Payne’s 1996 debut film Citizen Ruth — starring the other Laura, Laura Dern — prefigured many aspects of the media frenzy, a few years in advance.
Suncoast lands on Hulu Friday, part of the arrangement that has a lot of smaller Searchlight Pictures films, many of them from festivals, going straight to streaming. It’s worth a look, for sure, as the winter winds down.